Monthly Archives: November 2011

Uncategorized — 1 Comment
28
Nov 11

Advent

The dark season is here.  Darkness falls early, and there was an expectant hush in the air.  Yesterday I drove my daughter back to college after the Thanksgiving holiday.  As we ate an early dinner with her in the Haymarket café in Northampton, Massachusetts, and in the midst of all those college students on laptops or talking in groups, I received a text message from a high school friend who left high finance for the seminary.  He wished me an Advent full of hope.

Yesterday was the first Sunday in the Christian season of Advent.  Advent comes from the Latin word “adventus,” which means “coming.”  It is a time of waiting and preparation for the coming of Jesus at Christmas. It is a time of waiting for something marvelous and out of this world—for the Son but and for the return of the Sun.

It was remarkable to receive this text in that cavernous hippie café, surrounded by young people who—based on long conversations with my daughter—were full of uncertainty and anxiety about the future.  As we sat cocooned against the surrounding darkness, I was full of the feeling of the brevity and speed of life (how could my daughter be a senior in college?) yet I told her that pretty much everyone shares a sense of uncertainty these days.  After the text from my friend, I remembered that marvelous things can happen when we open to the unknown.

The act of meditation is the movement of letting of the well-worn thoughts or favorite feelings (even bad feelings can be like cherished old sweaters, cozy and ugly at the same time).  It is the act of remembering that we are here, alive and breathing, a movement of return to the awareness of the present moment. Bringing a sensitive, observant awareness to what is here and now, inside and out, we realize (one moment at a time) that reality is wild and vast and beyond our wildest dreams.

As some of my loyal readers know, I have been reading and reflecting on the dharma of Jane Eyre. Ever since the recent black out, I’ve been drawn to repurpose things, as well to simple comforts. During the Thanksgiving holiday, I was reading the harrowing scenes where Jane Eyre flees the passionate adoration of Mr. Rochester and the grand estate of Thornfield to endures utter desolation and destitution.  Suddenly it struck me as strange and fascinating that this young woman who was described as so perceptive and refined and pure of heart had to wander alone and defenseless in the great unknown—while poor crazy, vice-ridden Mrs. Rochester was safe in the attic.

Think of it.  For days, Jane wandered in the moors, exposed to the elements, soaked to the skin, reduced to the very line between life and death, absolutely unsure what the outcome would be.  And all the while, Mrs. Rochester was kept warm and dry and fed and so insensible to her surroundings.  She paced back and forth in the narrow and repetitive groove of her thought.  This is a very different kind of suffering from Jane’s, which was freely and consciously undertaken.

Why did brave, pure-hearted Jane have to leave the known and brave the unknown?  Why did she have to peel herself away from all those beautiful and comforting words to descend into the depths of darkness and despair?  And why do we, for that matter?  Why endure difficult feelings and times of waiting?  Why not keep ourselves entertained and distracted—which, come to think of it, our benumbing technology-driven consumer culture tends to do?  Jane learned that daring to feel, daring to open herself to reality without any buffer, led her back to the kinds of perceptions that a very young child has of what is good and essential.  It led to that there is a kind of love that wasn’t passion but compassion.  Braving homelessness, she discovered what it means to come home.

How difficult it is to leave the known for the unknown.  How hard it is to wait and not know what will come!   It took all of Jane Eyre’s famous will to do it:  “I care for myself.  The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.  I will keep the law given by God; sanctioned by man.”

In other words, she was holding out for something greater than living in lavish comfort as Mr. Rochester’s adored mistress.  Sustained only by her self-respect and the dream of a higher mother, supporting her wish to hold out for something more real, she took off into the wild unknown.   Our fantasies and our culture rarely (ever?) include the season of darkness and expectant waiting, of opening to the unknown.  Yet this is what we do when we sit down to meditate or kneel in prayer: we affirm that there is something greater to be discovered than we have ever thought.  This is what the season of Advent is for.

Here is a wonderful quote from our recent Parabola newsletter from C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity:  “Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of – throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.”

Uncategorized — 2 Comments
23
Nov 11

What I Know Now

“We can do no great things, only small things with great love,” Mother Teresa famously said.  She and other wise beings also indicated that doing small things with attention and the aspiration to act as if we are part of a greater whole can be a source of strength—even grace.  Being part of the community of Parabola has revealed much about this in the past year.

Early in November, I interviewed the green Manhattan developer Jonathan Rose for the upcoming “Burning World” issue of Parabola.  At the time of the interview, I was heating by wood stove due to the power outage that followed the freak October snow storm here in the Northeastern U.S.    Reminded of the way much of the world lives and have always lived, my heart and mind opened to the ideas  he had to share with Parabola—among them that the quality of awareness and our actions change when we realize there is no “other.”  There is no longer any air or water or planet or people “out there” that we can abuse because they are separate from us.  We are truly and inextricably interconnected.  I came away from the interview reflecting on how ancient and spiritual the innovative green thinking seems to be:  we must pay attention to the smallest details, awhile keeping an open mind, understanding that there is much that can’t be known—and that we are all in this together.

Sometimes marvelous things we could never predict emerge this way.  Last week, I was invited to Rockefeller Foundation in Manhattan, to hear a discussion of Infinite Vision.  This book (to be reviewed and excerpted in “Burning World”) tells the thrilling story of how, in 1976, a retired Indian doctor with arthritic hands started an 11-bed eye hospital, vowing to eliminate needless blindness.  What he lacked in resources, he made up for in the quality of his attention and the sincerity of his intention.   Today, his hospital Aravind has treated over 29 million patients and performed over 3.6 million surgical and laser procedures, the vast majority for patients who are too poor to pay.

How did he do it? How can we bring a similar kind of service to the rest of the suffering world?  Again and again, the authors of Infinite Vision, Pavi Mehta and Suchitra Shenoy, were asked versions of this question by U.N. workers and members of foundations.  Again and again, they stressed the doctor’s attention on small acts and his spiritual aspiration and intention.   The discussion in the room shifted to the need to find ways to articulate spiritual truth—that we are all part of a larger whole, that there is no “other”—in terms that everyone can understand.

I realized in that moment that Parabola serves a very important and practical function in this suffering world.  I am full of gratitude for the people doing many small things with great attention and care to help Parabola.  Please check out our on-line auction, which starts this coming Sunday, to see how Parabola has become a community– a collective way of sharing insights drawn from our time and from every culture and time about how to awaken to our oneness.   I have come to see that awakening to oneness—to the realization that no one and no part of the world is “other” than us– is the foundation of every kind of change.  For over 35 years, Parabola has helped illuminate this truth.  Now this truth needs sharing as never before, and through many small acts on all of our parts it is happening.  We really are all in this together.   I am very grateful to you all.  Happy Thanksgiving!

Awakening / Awareness / Happiness — No Comments
21
Nov 11

The Art of Reflection

The dark season is here.  With the shorter days, there comes a feeling of drawing in.  It is the time of the harvest, and a time for reflection on all that has been given in the best season.   I love the word reflection because it reminds me of the moon, which casts a reflected light.  I recently learned that in the ancient Buddhist language of Pali, reflection has the same double meaning it does in English—it means to be like a mirror, to receive and impression and hold it without adding anything; it also means to contemplate or consciously consider.  A good word, right?   Talk about a finger pointing towards the moon—towards a way of reflecting on our life as we live it.

Among the blessings things have arisen that don’t immediately inspire gratitude:  hard times for many and for the planet, uncertainty and injustice seem to prevail.   And yet in the midst of this pain, new–ancient–possibilities are being entertained.

There is a growing understanding that security in this economy (any economy in any time) comes from connecting with others rather than isolating.  Here is a radically ancient idea to ponder:  instead of focusing so much on building wealth, we focus on our families and communities—and on building trust.  According to many studies—and according to our own intuition—it turns out that happiness in this rocky time has less to do with amassing a great big pile of cash than in acts of generosity—of opening up and sharing what we have to give in every sense.

As Sitting Bull is quoted as saying in the “Giving and Receiving” issue of Parabola(and I’m paraphrasing) real wealth is not what you save but what you give.  As Scrooge learned and as the Beatles sang: “In in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.”

A few weeks ago, I interviewed the enlightened Manhattan developer Jonathan Rose (he might blush to here himself described that way, but at least I used a small “e.”)  He told me that in some countries (and in some of his projects in New York), there is a shift away from a focus on private dwellings and more focus on public spaces and private meeting spaces.  This is a new ancient idea, gathering in the marketplace, the porch, the pub.

Some of us are beginning to learn what is truly precious.  Beyond securing what we truly need, our time is more valuable than making ever more money.   Ask Scrooge.  But how can we increase our time?   We can learn to pay attention to our lives.  Mediate. And at the beginning and end of every day, we can reflect on the possible consequences of what will happen before, during, and after engaging in a particular act, string of words, thoughts.

Last Saturday, at Chuang Yen Monastery in upstate Carmel, New York, Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi spoke to a small group of us about the Buddha’s advice to his son Rahula when he was seven years old.  The Buddha spoke of the importance of telling the truth.  Naturally, this inspired a great deal of talk about the lies we hear on a daily basis from our elected officials—and our own intentional or self-deluding lies.   Yet the ancient import stuck with me: the intention to tell the truth and live the truth builds trust.

The Buddha told his little son he could learn to do this by practicing reflection—what will be the consequence before, during, and after doing, saying, thinking this or that?  He also told the little boy he could confess wrong-doing  (since most of us are not living in a monastery or are under the gaze of a wise teacher, we can confess to yourself, our inner wise teacher).   We can reflect on a mistake we made in the past, reflecting on what we learned from it, resolving not to repeat it.

This seemingly simple sutta struck a chord with me.  I realized that I am at a point where seemingly old ideas seem new.  And I realized that if a little boy could practice reflection, so can I.  And I am realizing that reflecting like this on the quality and consequences of acts and thoughts, like meditation, is a way to gain time—it deepens and enriches the time we have.  I mean, it gives even the small details of our lives a different quality and consequence.   Try reflecting.  I find it opens the door to gratitude, to the hidden blessing in things and more:  It deepens and increases time.

 

Awakening / Awareness / Climate Change / Extreme Weather / Global Warming / Grace / Happiness / October Snowstorm / Presence / Radical Acceptance / Seeing / Tracy Cochran / Waking Up — 8 Comments
14
Nov 11

A Life With Heart

What does it mean to live fully?  To live a life with heart? The lesson from the power outage is still with me.  Even as I go about living my ordinary, electrically illuminated, computer active life, I find myself remembering there can be a deeper quality to life.  In the darkness and stillness, my sleep had a different quality, and so did my dreams.  As I mentioned in this space before, I have embarked on a book project I am tentatively calling “How Jane Eyre Can Change Your Life,” so I read Jane Eyre by firelight and candlelight, noting with a new awareness the role that fires and candlelight played in this masterpiece.   I went to sleep at night full of the insight that much of human life was—and still is, in much of the world—a struggle to survive in the most elemental sense —to build fires and have fresh, clean water and good food.   And this elemental  physical quest to get all the right elements in the right relation resonates with our quest for inner harmony—for expression, love, and connection in this world.

One night, buried under nine blankets and still cold, I dreamed I was wandering through a dark, northern place searching for shelter and food.  This is possibly the influence of Jane Eyre, although it had a very ancient, Nordic feel about it—I was marching through snow afraid of a wolf-like creature that dragged off children, a creature which could change shape and become a raven or even a black insect that devoured from within (Creepy!).  I woke up realizing that our bodies and minds carry the memory of being tiny, vulnerable things surrounded by unknown forces.   And the unknown had teeth.  A Christian missionary once asked some Viking thanes how they saw life.  They told him (I paraphrase) that we are like birds that fly out of the darkness into the light and warmth of the meade hall.  After a brief time we fly out into the unknown again.   If we really knew that life is brief and our future uncertain, dependent on mysterious forces, how would we live?

I came out of my brief time in the dark and the cold realizing (along with so many others) that we really do need to shift to a different kind of economy, a sustainable economy.   And this includes our inner economy.   We need to learn to use all we are given—even the seemingly painful stuff.  From my time reading by firelight, I began to appreciate that Jane Eyre can be read as quest to love and find love and more: she had to use her own light.  As Jane is about to be shipped off to boarding school, her nurse Bessie calls her “a little roving, solitary thing” ….and tells her, “You should be bolder.”

“I don’t think I shall ever be afraid of you again, Bessie, because I have got used to you; and I shall soon have another set of people to dread.”

“If you dread, they’ll dislike you.”

In the course of this story Jane Eyre learns to go beyond bursts to rebellion and vengeance—to claim her own inner fire and use it meet the unknown (and not to give it away, but it is full of scary things).   Before Rochester professes love for her, she expresses love—and not just for Rochester but for her own life, for what she is in essence.

“ Do you think because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless?  You think wrong! –I have as much soul as you—and full as much heart!  And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you.  I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh: it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God’s feet, equal—as we are!”

I wish to remember what I learned during the power outage about what it means to live a different, sustainable life, a life with heart.

Uncategorized — 3 Comments
10
Nov 11

Enough is Enough!

Enough!  Enough burning with greed, hatred, and aversion—enough reaching for more while trashing or overlooking what is here and now.  This is the groundswell message from the growing Occupy Movement and its spiritual offshoots:  Occupy Yourself, Occupy Your Mind, Occupy Your Heart, Occupy the Moment, and probably more to come. There is widespread questioning.   At times the question seems to arise from the Earth itself.  Can we begin to live another way? Can we be cool and put out the fire, replacing greed and fear with compassion and generosity? Can we let enough be enough?  This is definitely possible at moments.

I saw this yesterday, at lunch in a cozy Italian restaurant in Nyack, New York.   My friend and Parabola colleague David showed a few of us how our upcoming holiday online auction is shaping up.  I was blown away by the spirit of generosity that infused the whole project.   I felt very much as I did during the blackout, that I was watching the glimpsing the spontaneous arising of goodness and generosity—beautiful works of art and crafts and services being offered.   Do scroll through it when it goes up on our website just after Thanksgiving: you will be watching a beautiful and diverse community unfold.  Forgive me, I just can’t resist seeing it as a kind of gentle Occupy Parabola movement.  Even if you don’t, you may be filled, as I was, with a sense of beauty and bounty, of enough.

Enoughness, the coolness of generosity and compassion compared to the fire of greed and hate, these are not new ideas.  Jesus and Buddha went about occupying various places, urging people to stop being so grasping and blind to what really matters.  In our own time, environmentalists and deep ecologists and economists and all kinds of people have been trying to get our attention.  Years ago, when I was at Publishers Weekly, I remember reviewing a book by Bill McKibben called Enough.  In that book, the ecologist reported from the frontiers of genetic research, nanotechnology and robotics (which have advanced considerably since the book was published in 2003, rendering it yesterday’s journalism). What remains interesting is that McKibben sought what he called the “enough point.”

What sets a human being apart from other beings, McKibben argued–and many more are arguing this now–is our capacity for restraint-and for finding  meaning in letting go. “We need to do an unlikely thing,” writes McKibben. “We need to survey the world we now inhabit and proclaim it good. Good enough.” McKibben presents an uncompromising view, and an essential view. I realized on the way home from lunch yesterday that even if I did have the option of becoming a pain-free, all-but-immortal, genetically enhanced semi-robot (which is the kind of improbable world McKibben portrays) it would be nothing compared to being an ordinary human being who knows she will grow old and die; yet who can find happiness and meaning—and even a huge charge, literally a current of energy–in the face of that.  In certain moments, I know we are all connected, and all charging, enlivening one another, and all of us supported by a greater whole—and it is good.  Good Enough.

Awakening / Awareness / Extreme Weather / Grace / Happiness / October Snowstorm / Presence / Radical Acceptance / Seeing — 2 Comments
06
Nov 11

What Would Thoreau Do When the Power Goes Out?

“I did not read books the first summer; I hoed beans.  Nay, I often did more than this.  There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hands.  I love a broad margin to my life,” writes Thoreau, as quoted in beautiful “Many Paths One Truth” issue of Parabola.

Thoreau describes finding his own way to the luminous awakened mind, first bathing in Walden Pond in the morning, then sitting his sunny doorway, “rapt in a revery, admidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, undisturbed solitude and stillness….” Thoreau discovered that when he was still and observant, when he refrained from all striving seeking anything outside himself, those moments were bountiful in a way that our conventional busy life is not: “They were not time subtracted from my life, but so much over and above my usual allowance.”

Day by day, finding his own way of meditating and being with his experience, Thoreau discovered that life unfolds naturally without any input from us.  He describes a luminous awakened mind state of mind that innately knows how to meet and mirror what is arising:  In this deeper, receptive state of mind, everything about the housework and chores that were part of his simple rustic life became interesting and fun: “It was a drama of many scenes and without end.  If we were always, indeed, getting our living, and regulating our lives according to the last and best mode we had learned, we should never be troubled with ennui. Follow your genius closely enough, and it will not fail to show you a fresh prospect every hour.”

I happened to think of this as I poked the fire in the woodstove, cold and miserable, desperately wishing the power would come back on so I could get on with my “real” life.  I suddenly wondered what Thoreau would have made of the experience, and that changed everything.  Especially during the days when trees and wires were down everywhere and we were advised not to drive, I realized that I could actually try not fighting the experience, letting go of fretting about what I was missing and following “the last and best mode” of mindful observation (the last resort for many of us).  It’s amazing how an attitude of attentive interest, a wish to investigate and learn, can allow experience to unfold.

I actually jotted down a list of things I wished to remember, and these are a few:  I noticed how darkness and stillness aids concentration—and that I didn’t feel cut off from life but closer, part of it; I noticed the power of illumination—even a small candle brings warmth as well as light; and as I wrote last time acts of kindness and cooperation also bring warmth.  I learned that the effort I most need to make is not grasping but letting go, being with life as it unfolds, receiving what is being offered instead of huddling there shivering and waiting for the lights to come back on.

I tried to get into the chores that faced me the way I thought Thoreau wood, and I did enjoy the drama of it all, and I found it absorbing, well, until the morning of the fifth day when I spent hours trying to get a fire started with damp wood.  But I realized that this is the way it goes.  As I walked around the yard, foraging for fallen limbs, I realized that this was a very different way to reflect on impermanence.   Somewhere along the way I heard or read that impermanence is most often allied with deterioration. Trees fall down in a storm, all conditioned things—including loved ones and ourselves—change and pass away. And we, living in the forest of desires, are entirely composed of the impermanent.  Last week (at least at my better moments) I saw how my  desire for things to be different blinded me to this deeper truth.  And when it occurred to me to stop fighting the experience—and let’s face it I couldn’t turn on the computer or the TV or be busy in the usual way, I had to live so deliberately!—I saw that my own mind and body states were continually changing, shifting from pleasant to unpleasant to neutral, continually arising and passing away.

Like Thoreau, I began to realize that the truth of life—and its real unfolding drama–is not to be found in a book—out and away somewhere.  It is right here and right now, wherever we are.  And when we give up doing and striving for a time to watch, we may find a field of brightness inside, a kind of natural solar powered attention, that can meet any condition that arises, illuminating from within.

 

Awakening / Awareness / Christmas / Happiness / October Snowstorm / Scrooge / Waking Up — 7 Comments
04
Nov 11

Christmas in October

As I write this, I am struggling to get a good fire going in the woodstove.  We are in the middle of a freak October snow storm—the third freak storm since August—and we have no lights, no heat, and no running water since we depend on a well. A few months ago, during Hurricane Irene, I wrote about tending the stove and feeling a connection to my ancestors.  In the midst of this particular massive and record-breaking storm (there are getting to be so many we have to distinguish), I am feeling a particular connection to my ancestors who lived in very cold climates (I’m washing dishes in snow!)  How hearty they had to be.  It takes an enormous act of will to get up in a cold, dark house and light a fire.  Yet, as I kneel here shivering , I am also thinking of those who are younger than I am.  I am wondering if they will wonder why in the name of all that is good the deeper cause of this wild weather didn’t quite sink in last time.   I’m talking about what the Buddhists call the “three poisons” of greed, hatred, and delusion.

By firelight and flashlight, or in my bedroom under about nine blankets, I am reading and reflecting on a teaching of the Buddha called the “Fire Sermon,” translated from Pali, the earliest Buddhist language,  by the Buddhist scholar monk Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi.   For a future issue of Parabola  called “Burning World,” he adds a brilliant commentary.  In plain language, the Buddha talks about the way life goes—that everything  human is burning or impermanent, all our impressions and feelings and our life itself, all fleeting.   Yet, as Ven. Bodhi points out, on top of this natural burning, there is the “parasitic”  burning of greed or grasping, hatred or aversion to people and things we don’t like, and delusion or the denial of what is really happening.  These are natural tendencies in all of us, and most of us do our best to overcome them through meditation, prayer, or sheer live-and-learn common sense.   Yet, we now live in an age where we aren’t just impacted by greed, hatred, and delusion on a personal or local level.  There are vast systems fueled by greed, hatred, and delusion—and those systems effect all us, in the economy, in climate change.

Huddling by the woodstove, I suddenly realize that as much as I may want to I really can’t separate myself from the global situation.   But I bring good news.   Having the power cut off has a way of drawing out the power of kindness and generosity.    In the midst of dramatic news reporters talking about what was happening being beyond anything in recorded history and the millions without power in our region, individuals and groups quietly set about helping their neighbor.  The Salvation Army set up a warming station in the local Middle School.  My neighbor came over and told us about it and over we went to charge phones and laptop.  It was incredibly warming illuminating, watching the look on peoples’ faces as they entered and saw tables set out with food and big vats of coffee.  I live in a middle class pocket of a generally very affluent area, and it was especially touching to see people coming in who looked just astonished to see smiling Salvation Army and other volunteers there offering not just basic necessities like food and army cots and blankets but smiles.   For a time, the gym looked like an old time town square, kids watching movies on lap tops, groups of old people talking.  It made me realize how wonderful it would be, to have more community life, not just Manhattan and rushing home to your own house.

But the real food for thought came with simple individual acts of generosity.  My neighbor Keith, who was getting up at 4:30 to start a fire for his family before heading for his job in the city, came over after dark to see if we needed water.  He was headed to the fire station where there was a hose for everybody’s use.  I remembered what our ancestors knew, that survival depends on cooperation.  And not just practical cooperation—but offering a smile and a laugh, fellowship.  Love your neighbor, do unto others as you would have them do unto you–or don’t do what you would you would not have done—however you frame it, I learned that this is a very profound and spiritually developed way to live.

In his commentary on the Fire Sermon, Ven. Bodhi  offers that our culture has to shift our notion of success, away from the achievement of more and more wealth, power, and domination, to the actualization of truth, goodness, and beauty.   When the lights and heat went off, I realized that this shift really is possible in the moment—and there is a great deal of good will and generosity out there that just seems to flower when it is needed. I had five long cold, dark days to reflect on what is really essential to a good life, and what is not.  I feel a little bit like Scrooge on Christmas morning, resolved to live by different lights (not that I ever did amass wealth or fame.   I realized that I the direction I want to move in is out of separation into no separation.  Now how do I remember this when the lights and the heat come back on.